'Call centre nightmare' NZ herald article on slingshot call centre.

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › 'Call centre nightmare' NZ herald article on slingshot call centre.

andrewcnz

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#72532 28-Nov-2010 12:58

"Call centre nightmare" NZ herald article on slingshot call centre. Note phone number in article.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10690502

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#410388 28-Nov-2010 13:00

Hahahaha brilliant!

freitasm

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#410392 28-Nov-2010 13:22

Nothing new there, sure? We all know of someone here on Geekzone experiencing appaling customer services from many telcos.

Interesting their CEO denial... Like they don't know the service they offer have problems?

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tigercorp

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#410452 28-Nov-2010 19:36

I wonder how long that number will stay active :D

farcus

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#410457 28-Nov-2010 20:01

I rang Malcolm Dick, who owns CallPlus, the parent company of Slingshot. "That's a ghastly experience," he said. "There must have been something way out of the ordinary that has happened."

He got chief executive Scott Page to call me. "The wait time you experienced was not acceptable by our standards. It is also not typical of the customer service our customers usually enjoy."

Malcolm Dick & Scott Paige - are you for real with these responses?
Surely you cannot be unaware that this story seems to relate a typical call to slingshot - not out of the ordinary at all.

A couple of months ago I had problems with my italk line. Called Saturday evening - on hold for approximately 90 minutes before my call was answered.
Did receive fairly good service from the rep - who escalate my call to a technical team who were able to fix my problem the next day.

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#410480 28-Nov-2010 21:20

tigercorp: I wonder how long that number will stay active :D

I don't think Scott expected David to call his bluff, pretty awesome stuff. Given that he'll have a company phone I'd imagine the other staff will have similar numbers, should try calling the number while changing the last digit and see who you get hold of.

daman88

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#410499 28-Nov-2010 22:31

Nothing new here - that's why they have signed out from that Telecommunication forum and probably they don't want to get fine!

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#410503 28-Nov-2010 22:44

I wont even bother trying to call slingshot anymore. A hold time longer than 5 mins (except in outage situations) just shows that the call center doesnt give a toss about their customers.

I dare someone from slingshot to publish their hold time stats for their queues - and not the calls from mobile since its become very obvious that they get first dibs on anyone that is free.

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NZCrusader

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#410559 29-Nov-2010 08:59

Not defending them or anything. But dont you think they might answer your call if someone is free at the time ?

Personally , I think they are most likely understaffed.

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#410563 29-Nov-2010 09:04

Understaffed is something that happens at some point - once a company identifies this is happening on a regular basis, the obvious expectation from the customer side is to see the company increasing the staff numbers, providing a better level of service.

I don't expect a company to have zero waiting time, but anything more than ten minutes is too much.

Companies should invest on good automated services, self service options, etc.

Obviously having a self service option doesn't mean good service. If there's such an option then companies should have people exclusively working on that too.

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wreck90

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#410582 29-Nov-2010 09:59

I had slingshot calling me the other day, told them I'm not interested, due to all the bad publicity.

Regarding waiting times, I deliberately bought a speaker phone due to the long waiting times when calling some organisations.

Now I dial the number ,put it on speaker, and get back to work while I wait for an operator.

Just got to watch the coffee break, as sometimes you are waiting significant lengths of time and you forget about the call ha ha.

I dislike the organisations that either cut you off, or, force you to use callback .

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#410934 29-Nov-2010 22:58

NZCrusader: Not defending them or anything. But dont you think they might answer your call if someone is free at the time ?

Personally , I think they are most likely understaffed.

Not only understaffed, they are over specialised. Their accounts people will not talk to anyone about other issues (so they put you back in the queue once accounts are sorted) and customer service seem unable to do or learn anything. In my experience, customer service should be the tier 1 helpdesk for all basic problems from tech to accounts or sales, and can forward you to a less congested queue when you need more specialist help. It involves training the entry level reps to handle the first stage of both trouble shooting and enquiries before escalating the call. It also retains the more experienced staff who then have a career path to less stressful and more stimulating jobs.

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#410950 29-Nov-2010 23:50

I'm with slingshot and have found 1-2 hour wait times to be normal from a landline, but phoning from a mobile phone puts me through to a CSR within 10 minutes.

So... If you want to get through, call the 0800 number from your mobile. Front of the queue thanks :-)

Or txt the CEO :)

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#411005 30-Nov-2010 08:50

When I moved house it took daily phone calls for 2 weeks to get all the issues sorted out with Slingshot. The products have actually been quite good and the service
I got when they were trying to sign me up at the beginning was excellent but otherwise I have dreaded the day that I had to ring their call centre again.

So now that my contract has finished, for a few extra dollars I'm off to an ISP that can (hopefully) offer me a better overall service.

edit: on another note - Does anyone ever post here to say how awesome their ISP is???

Doing your best is much more important than being the best.

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#411035 30-Nov-2010 09:48

exportgoldman:
I'm with slingshot and have found 1-2 hour wait times to be normal from a landline, but phoning from a mobile phone puts me through to a CSR within 10 minutes.

So... If you want to get through, call the 0800 number from your mobile. Front of the queue thanks :-)

Or txt the CEO :)

I'm guessing the reaosn for that is termination rates - which work in reverse for an 0800 number. If a cellphone calls a Slingshot 0800 number then slingshot have to pay the cellphone proivider a termination charge per minute. If they can get the mobile calls sorted faster it will cost them less.

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#411071 30-Nov-2010 11:06

Slingshot is the $2 shop of ISP's.

Internode (a popular ISP for enthusiast/geeks in Australia) publish their wait times publicly online, I doubt any NZ ISP has the balls to do similar.
http://www.internode.on.net/about/performance/call-wait-times/

I really wish there was an ISP like Internode in NZ.
http://www.internode.on.net/about/

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